winner takes all

Here's the background. Five teams in Dr. Tim Christy’s  Ad Strategy class had three weeks to research, find insights and develop a campaign strategy. Then, last week, the teams had 20-minutes to pitch their ideas to a panel of five judges. Winner takes all, well in this case an A.

I was one of those judges.

Let me say, it’s great being the client (or in this case a judge). I know how much effort was devoted to these presentations. That being said, as a judge I really don’t care.

All I care about is a coherent argument that is backed up with evidence and is told in an engaging way. Also, I want to know how the team plans to measure the effectiveness of their strategy. Am I starting to sound like a client?

Now, for some constructive criticism. One common theme I noticed: the business problem was not defined. I just finished reading Juicing the Orange by Pat Fallon and Fred Senn. They say, "demand a ruthlessly simple definition of the business problem." How very true. If you don't know the business problem how can you solve it? The folks at Fallon have a list of 127 questions to help identify the business problem. Here's the list.

Overall, I was impressed with all the teams who pitched their ideas. They did a great job in a short amount of time.

Some resources for the next pitch:

I recommend Jon Steel’s book Perfect Pitch. I love the story about Steve Jobs.
Also, Garr Reynolds has some great presentation tips.

Comments

[Tim Christy]

I recently came across Sam's posting re: my Strategy class's strategic pitches. First, let me write electronically what I have already communicated interpersonally - Thank you, Sam, for agreeing to judge the presentations on such short notice; your feedback was much appreciated. With that said, I must respectfully disagree with Sam’s assessment that the problem was never defined. A cornerstone of my course is identification of not merely business problems, but also promotional problems reflecting the constantly expanding perspective of what entails "advertising." This identification is fundamental to the development of any strategic plan and to claim that such a rudimentary element of a new business pitch was MIA in the presentations is quite frankly a bit of an insult to my teaching of the course. Being the anal-retentive and self-criticizing academic that I am, I went back through the presentations to verify the inclusion of the, as you seem to allude, elusive business problem. As I had indeed remembered, every presentation did provide a problem definition as well as, in some cases, strong background information that lent credence to identification of the most relevant problems. I admit some teams did a better job than others at more clearly defining the key problem, but all teams at least provided context for their strategy in the form of a problem definition.

Now, if you were merely highlighting this so-called shortcoming to tie in your recent read of JTO, I can respect that tactic. However, please keep in mind that when you erroneously publish a weakness of my students, especially one so elementary, you are also erroneously publishing a weakness of my teaching style. I take my profession very seriously and do not appreciate being indirectly accused of something like not fully teaching strategy when I have taken great pains to provide my students a comprehensive, albeit 10-week long overview of sound strategy development.

I mean no ill-will; I merely respectfully disagree with Sam's assessment. It should also be noted that these pitches were initial conceptual pitches and not campaign pitches. Therefore, the presentation teams were not required to include a media plan or creative tactics, although some offered undeveloped recommendations. Therefore, full strategic assessment (in the DAGMAR tradition) was not addressed. Indeed, development of a media plan would have included a complete forecasting of likely effectiveness. With that said, Sam's mention of the importance of assessment is dead-on; however, students were hard-pressed to develop an assessment plan based on the parameters of the assignment.

Thanks again to Sam for stepping in as a judge at the last minute when one of the original judges had to bow out due to an emergency.